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Calling the Earthlings
This is really important to me. This time last year I had the worst panic attack of my life. I'd sat on the edge of the sea and thought, "I failed you. You gave me everything and I did nothing to protect you." It devolved quickly into nearly six hours of sobbing, hyperventilating, and pure panic. After that, I started picking up trash, for hours on end. I didn't eat meat, I didn't buy clothes, I didn't drive cars.... A lot of the anxiety died down and while I still occasionally pick up trash, I now eat meat and I'll get in a car if need be. But the feeling that I could do more, and the feeling of fear is still wrought in every thought. So this challenge is part of an art project I'm doing to sort of communicate these thoughts- thoughts I know are shared by so many people. Show me how you feel about the environment in any format, and then comment at the bottom whether or not you'd be okay with me using your words, and if I could credit you in any way. Thank you so much!

The Earth is my Rock

Ten years ago I found myself in a...similar situation.

I was a very passionate young man.

Posting statistics to urinals, so no one could claim ignorance.

Research, interviews, seeking the truth.

I was an angry young man, an anxious young man, and it was killing me.

My skin hurt...everything hurt.

I went to doctor after doctor, all telling me...

That I was just fine.

I was losing my mind...

Eventually I ended up in a psych ward

Ten days

I found it funny that the one thing that could really help those people

Would have been a walk in the sunshine

To sit beneath the leaves in the summer time

Instead it was a bleached linoleum prison

When I got out

I went for walks

Long walks

I meandered down by the sea shore

Collecting pieces of crabs, shells

Stones that took my fancy

Stones encrusted with baby oysters

Creamy white, little snowflakes from the sea

I'd go to the woods

I love the smell of earth after a rain

Walk down by the pond

Watching the beavers make their dams

Lo and behold, there were mussel shells

Freshwater mussel shells, huge ones

Littering the shore

Then i'd return home, to my garden

Oh, my garden

That garden was the joy of my life

Every season a new catalog would come in

And I'd spend hours poring over it

Flipping through the pages

Dreaming of which new seeds, which new plants, could grace my garden

Mint, thyme, rosemary, basil

Heirloom corn

Squash, collards...woof were they good!

In my room I made a little shrine, of all the living things

I'd build "totems" to give me strength

To remind me that life finds a way

That despite all the death, all the poison, all the pain...

Despite everything I saw on the news...

Birds still sing among the trees

The warm, sweet wind of summer

Still caresses my cheek through the car window

The oysters still grow like flowers in the sea bed

The crabs still scuttle along, through the cold, clear brine

And i'm still here, too

Eternal as the wind

Earth is my shepherd

Earth is my rock